Some Like It Hot is showing at the Independent Picture House in Charlotte, North Carolina on Friday, May 30 at 4:30 pm, in tribute to ‘Centennial Icon’ Tony Curtis; and again on what would be his 100th birthday, Tuesday, June 3, at 7:30 pm. (Co-star Jack Lemmon was also born in 1925, with Marilyn to follow a year later.)
Tony Curtis is a divisive figure among Monroe fans, not least for his controversial remark to a reporter on the set that kissing Marilyn was ‘like kissing Hitler.’ His language was harsh, but in fairness, Lemmon and director Billy Wilder have also spoken about how difficult Marilyn was to work with – frequently showing up late, blowing lines, and lashing out at co-workers.
Bizarrely, Curtis would claim in his 2009 book, Some Like It Hot: Me, Marilyn and the Movie, that he had an affair with Monroe during filming, and that he was the father of the baby she miscarried – which seems highly unlikely (see here.) Regardless, his performance in Some Like It Hot is sublime. In an excerpt from the same book, Curtis recalled how Wilder and co-writer I.A.L. Diamond brought this classic comedy together.
“Billy wouldn’t act out a scene for you the way some directors did. Or leave you alone, like most directors did. A lot of them were traffic cops. ‘Come in this door. Say your line. Go out that door.’ That was it. But not Billy. He gave you enough direction to understand the importance of the scene. And of course he and Izzy had written it. How could you go wrong? Some Like It Hot did a lot for my development as an actor. It wasn’t enough for me to be a handsome actor, maybe the handsomest in town. It wasn’t enough to learn the lines and show up. Being around artists like Jack and Billy and Marilyn affected me. I wanted to know more. I wanted to get closer to the source of the art. I wanted to know how to create that magic, like stars did in the pictures I’d seen when I was a kid. But how do you get a formula for magic?”
The Marilyn Report 